At-Issue State Absolutism and Moral Agency in the Political Philosophy

African Studies Quarterly | Volume 18, Issue 3| May 2019 At-Issue State Absolutism and Moral Agency in the Political Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes and Niccolò Machiavelli: Implications for Eritrea PETROS B. OGBAZGHI Abstract: In the progression of Western political philosophy from Aristotle to the Enlightenment, even the most statist thinkers such as Hobbes and Machiavelli, who saw organized society as a necessary evil, never accepted the notion of absolutism that sucks man's free development. Central to Hobbes' conceptualization of the state is that an artificially created sovereign is owed the total submission of his subjects who are faced with an immanent existential threat. Subjects, nonetheless, exist as individual moral agents whose values of justice and liberty—the products of social thought and common conviction—are realized in civil society of the Commonwealth. With Machiavelli’s principality, by contrast, while the success and survival of the state is closely tied together with that of the prince and his subjects, the political community could still be judged in terms of moral committal to the civic virtues of prudence, legitimacy, and order, constituting a venerated political and social force contributing consequentially to individual development. This article entails a comparative study of moral agency in light of Hobbes' Leviathan and Machiavelli's The Prince and examines its implications for Eritrea against the backdrop of its downward spiral into totalitarianism. It argues that both proponents of absolutism offer a critique of the state particularly pertinent to Eritrea where individual development is embedded on a single supreme moral authority. While notions of real or imagined existential threats, which affords regimes to roll state-society into one, enabled Eritrea to maintain a semblance of national unity, its flip side, the exercise and preservation of personal power through sheer repression, has subjected the state to idiosyncratic political attributes that militate against free agency: a nihilistic image to which neither Hobbes’ sovereign nor Machiavelli's prince would wish to subscribe. Key words: state-society relations; state absolutism; free agency Introduction This study seeks to examine the relationship between state absolutism and individual moral agency against the backdrop of Eritrea's downward spiral into totalitarianism. By drawing inspiration from Hobbes' Leviathan and Machiavelli's The Prince, the paper argues that even the most statist thinkers such as Hobbes and Machiavelli—who saw organized society as a necessary evil—would offer a critique of the state particularly pertinent to Eritrea, where the singularity and ultimacy of the morality of the state has resulted in the stunting of free agency. Specifically, while notions of real and/or imagined existential threat, which affords regimes the opportunity to lump together the state and the national society into one monolithic political entity, seems to have helped Petros B. Ogbazghi is a former lecturer in the Department of Public Administration, University of Asmara, Eritrea. He holds a PhD in Politics & Administration from Tilburg University and a Master's Degree in Public Policy & Administration. His research interests include; state-society relations in Eritrea; politics and governance in the developing world; urban regimes and local government in Western Europe. http://www.africa.ufl.edu/asq/v18/v18i3a4.pdf © University of Florida Board of Trustees, a public corporation of the State of Florida; permission is hereby granted for individuals to download articles for their own personal use. Published by the Center for African Studies, University of Florida. ISSN: 2152-2448 State Absolutism and Moral Agency| 48 the Eritrean regime maintain a sense of national unity, its anti-thesis, the exercise and preservation of personal power merely through repression and violence rather than the rule of law, has subjected the state to idiosyncratic political attributes that militate against individual moral agency: a nihilistic image to which neither Hobbes’ sovereign nor Machiavelli's prince would wish to subscribe. By way of introduction, the common analytical threads that cut across Hobbes and Machiavelli are comparatively addressed. These pertain not just to their extreme iconoclastic and pessimistic views of human nature and the concept of the “political” that lent itself to dislocate classical and medieval beliefs and intellectual paradigms: philosophical views which marked them out as the pioneers of modern political thought. But perhaps one of the most important aspect of their political theory or at least valuable in the analysis of moral agency is their recognition, albeit understood and analysed in their separate ways, of the political and social space that is needed for individual agency and civil society. Thus, for example, Hobbes, who took individual members as his unit of analysis, saw subjects as a polity of equals endowed with liberty and freedom, albeit liberty is construed as a negative right and a necessary evil, opening, nonetheless, the possibilities for the realization of “unbounded and disparate desires of individuals.”1 Further, despite Hobbes' pessimistic and egoistic view of human nature, individuals can discover irrefutable universal principles by exercising the right reason as the ultimate guide and basis—over passion—for making binding covenants and contracts out of which the Leviathan or the Commonwealth is constituted.2 Although the will of the collectives is subsumed in the artificially created person—the sovereign—in Hobbes' absolutist state, subjects exist as individual free agents and their values of justice and freedom—the effects of positive law and social discipline—are only produced or realized in civil society of the commonwealth.3 The Commonwealth thus provides the intersection point at which the rational aims of the individual—his capacity for volition and autonomy—and the collectives encapsulating “that which they desire to attain, namely their own good, which is the work of reason” are harmonized.4 On the one hand, is individual desire to escape from what Hobbes called “the fear of death and wounds’” which epitomises the 'state of nature' where self-preservation becomes of surpassing interest. Self-preservation is partly informed, legitimated and propelled by divine reason, although largely governed by passionately selfish and inexorable existentialist human nature.5 On the other hand, is the desire of the collectives to live “in peace and security” by ceding their individual natural rights for self-preservation, and hence, instituting, in exchange, over them an artificially created sovereign through collective agreements that are founded on naturalist and externalist law-based moral conduct as opposed to humanist-internalist moral order.6 Once at the helm, the sovereign, who holds, in a manner of speech, a metonymic sceptre with one hand, and a sword with the other commences “to keep them all in awe.”7 Brought forth by the midwifery of the social contract, the state of nature metaphorically gives birth to a political society, producing at one and the same time, the office and the person occupying it—the sovereign; he symbolizes the ultimate embodiment of the state itself without which: “there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain...no Society; which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.”8 Of course, subjects are tied to kings and princes who justify their authority by the moral principle of property-rights, where “continuous use has given them something more than the exercise of authority: it has given them ownership of authority; and their subjects are thus tied to them, and to the authority which they own, by the necessity of respecting ownership and all the African Studies Quarterly | Volume 18, Issue 3|May 2019 http://www.africa.ufl.edu/asq/v18/v18i3a3.pdf 49 | Ogbazghi rights which it carries.”9 And yet, Hobbes' early modern state was also characterised by an immense economic, social, and moral space in which individuals live in an atmosphere of liberty, where free agency and personal capacity is cherished and developed. In other words, the state maintains, at least in principle, a degree of political distance from private social life of subjects in such areas as the economic market, family life and religious sphere, if not in ecclesiastical matters.10 Indeed, Hobbes’ concept of the state was formulated against the backdrop of liberty and free agency where the state of nature has endowed individuals with natural rights and powers that enabled them to preserve their lives and properties. Hobbes contention that the collective will of individuals is subsumed in the office of an artificially created sovereign can indeed be considered ground-breaking in so far as Hobbes' “collectivization” allows society “a private sphere, which is regulated by the common law, and which escapes the direct power of the state.”11 This is true, especially when weighed against the ramifications of the exercise of absolute power both in early modern England and France, where kings claimed to be the state itself, but also in contemporary totalitarian systems, albeit differently, where the state has come to be conceived as an organic entity or a corporation sole, where the private sphere has shrunk to form a single Hegelian “ethical totality” rather than Hobbesian “persona civilis.”12 After all, the values of

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